07 September 2010

Nativity of Mary

On this extraordinary of days...

From G.K. Chesterton's, The Ball and the Cross, which I just happened to read this weekend (McIan, the Catholic, speaking to Turnbull, the atheist):
What phrase would inspire the London clerk or workman just now? Perhaps that he is a son of the British Empire on which the sun never sets; perhaps that he is a prop of his Trades Union, or a class-conscious proletarian something or other; perhaps merely that he is a gentleman when he obviously is not. Those names and notions are all honourable; but how long will they last? Empires break; industrial conditions change; the suburbs will not last for ever. What will remain? I will tell you. The Catholic Saint will remain."

"And suppose I don't like him?" said Turnbull.

"On my theory the question is rather whether he will like you: or more probably whether he will ever have heard of you. But I grant the reasonableness of your query. You have a right, if you speak as the ordinary man, to ask if you will like the saint. But as the ordinary man you do like him. You revel in him. If you dislike him it is not because you are a nice ordinary man, but because you are (if you will excuse me) a sophisticated prig of a Fleet Street editor. That is just the funny part of it. The human race has always admired the Catholic virtues, however little it can practise them; and oddly enough it has admired most those of them that the modern world most sharply disputes. You complain of Catholicism for setting up an ideal of virginity; it did nothing of the kind. The whole human race set up an ideal of virginity; the Greeks in Athene, the Romans in the Vestal fire, set up an ideal of virginity. What then is your real quarrel with Catholicism? Your quarrel can only be, your quarrel really only is, that Catholicism has achieved an ideal of virginity; that it is no longer a mere piece of floating poetry. But if you, and a few feverish men, in top hats, running about in a street in London, choose to differ as to the ideal itself, not only from the Church, but from the Parthenon whose name means virginity, from the Roman Empire which went outwards from the virgin flame, from the whole legend and tradition of Europe, from the lion who will not touch virgins, from the unicorn who respects them, and who make up together the bearers of your own national shield, from the most living and lawless of your own poets, from Massinger, who wrote the Virgin Martyr, from Shakespeare, who wrote Measure for Measure—if you in Fleet Street differ from all this human experience, does it never strike you that it may be Fleet Street that is wrong?"

03 September 2010

Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend, everyone!!

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately. So much to do with school starting!!

Category: Doppelgangers

This preacher and missionary shares his name with an infamous politician. This New Light Calvanist's works/lectures include "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." While he took great joy in the beauties of nature, he sought to live "earnestly and soberly, to waste no time, to maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking" and is "widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian."

St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys while you wait for the answer to be revealed.

Demerits for using Google and other sneaky searches. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged. Good luck!!

27 August 2010

Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



Happy Feast Day of St. Monica!

Here's a question in four parts. I think Chris and AA could get several, but can they get all of them?

Category: In the cards

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Who do the spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds represent.

St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys while you wait for the answer to be revealed.

Demerits for using Google and other sneaky searches. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged. Good luck!!

25 August 2010

Ancestor charts


The one hobby that I have had for most of my life is genealogy. I think the blend of history and discovery are what hold my interest.

I'm becoming more and more disappointed with information I find on the internet. I recently checked a popular genealogy site and found someone took information from my family tree and added things that are wrong, blended it all together and re-published the information. The tree actually cites sources, but the sources are all trees other people have mashed together as well. The result is a huge mess.

And, there is my own family that uses incredibly poor scholarship in piecing our common lines together. It's become a run-away train. I'd blame the evil black box of the internet, but the problem really lies in people's willingness to take what the internet says as gospel. Their own genealogical version of sola scriptura.

Ages ago when I lived in Seattle, I used to spend hours looking through rolls and rolls of microfilmed census data at the National Archives (I believe it's was God's plan to move me away from the archives because children were in my future...I don't think my kids would see much of me if an archive was nearby ;)). When records started to become accessible on-line, it was a huge time-saver. It was also very dangerous because it relied on the accuracy of the saintly, but fallible, transcriber. I've still had to go back to the original mircofilm because of transcription errors when I know for certain an ancestor should be on the microfilm.

As much as I'd love to jump at the break-throughs in my remaining genealogical brick walls, I don't want to connect my tree to an ancestor that's not my own. Though picking a name off the internet that kinda-sorta-almost matches is tempting and makes life easy, the self-deception is kinda-sorta-almost always painful.

Primary sources, not the internet or someone's interpretation of the sacred genealogical scriptures, is still required. No analogy intended.

20 August 2010

Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



Have a blessed weekend everyone.

Category: In the beginning

The earliest Monastic settlements in Ireland emerged at the end of the 5th century. This first identifiable founder of a monastery established a monastery at Kildare. This monastery was a double monastery, with both men and women ruled by the Abbess, a pattern found in many other monastic foundations.

St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys while you wait for the answer to be revealed.

Demerits for using Google and other sneaky searches. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged. Good luck!!

19 August 2010

Devotions


Mum of Six tagged me ages ago for this and I was too busy with all my devotions to get to it until now. Yup.

My Five Favorite Devotions
1. Chaplet of St. Philomena
2. Rosary
3. Novena to the Poor Souls in November
4. Divine Mercy
5. Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

15 August 2010

Some where in Wisconsin

During my week's vacation at the cabin I read Joseph Pearce's biography on Hilare Belloc, Old Thunder.

I shouldn't read biographies since they leave me feeling like I know the person enough to address them on the street. Several people have mentioned that biographies make them feel an artificial relationship with someone they never knew. It's odd to remind myself that all I know about Hilare Belloc, aside from the few works of his that I have read, my information comes from one person who never knew Belloc himself and has only tried to "clothe him" with the traces the man left behind.

Although Pearce's use of language remains annoying (I loved his book on Shakespeare because the subject fascinated me, but his words, especially starting out, are heavy...how many people (aside from Chesterton) repeatedly use the words jingoist or penury) and some of his speculations are truly just that, I can understand why he attempted to bring some life to his subject. Genealogists try to do the same. Tracing ancestors back through time, following their every move, trying to piece together their trail.

Slightly more than a decade ago, I sat on the steep hillside along side my great-great-grandfather's well-weathered grave marker. It took years of research to follow him to an obscure and mostly abandoned cemetery in southern Wisconsin where he had rested for generations without family visitors.

What I got from tracing my grandfather was how he, like most of my ancestors, sacrificed to come to this country for their faith. Undoubtedly, there were numerous reasons these ancestors had to immigrate to the US, but for so many of them, their faith was readily apparent and central to their lives. I love the surviving first-hand account about how another branch of Irish ancestors used to say the rosary each night in Gaelic.

My family, unlike Belloc's, was not fortunate enough to have had a prolific writer provide so much detail about the day-to-day struggles of what it is like living and persevering as a Catholic. Belloc is quoted in the book,
"I always like being in America, and find it most amusing. The newspapers tell one very little about Europe. The similarity of the language makes them sometimes talk about England as though they knew it better than the other countries, but it is just as foreign to them as all the others."

No wonder Belloc had a love of history and a desire to write it from a Catholic perspective. He knew the danger in disconnecting from the past.

However slight and vicarious they may be, biographies do allow us to see things from a different perspective. For me, researching my ancestors, like reading Belloc's biography to some extent, has allowed me to see their faith and why they cherished it.

06 August 2010

Long Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



On vacation!!

Category: Controversial Catholics

This Servant of God advocated distributism, for awhile worked on the staffs of Socialist publications, engaged in anti-war protests, and was an anarchist.

St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys while you wait for the answer to be revealed.

Demerits for using Google and other sneaky searches. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged. Good luck!!

The first correct answer in the form of a question wins the highly coveted WKJ ribbon to display on your blog, cubicle or refrigerator door.

05 August 2010

Natural resources


Spent the past few evenings hanging out at the local Catholic university library doing a project for my homeschool group. Although the library has been remodeled quite a bit since my days there, the distinctive smell of the book stacks takes me back to the days when I used to eat my lunch in the poorly lighted corridors. Decades ago we used text books, library books and had no computers, save an old VAX account that went no where.

Another thing hasn't changed, but I didn't know it back then. It appears to be true until this day. College students at a private Catholic university aren't checking out good Catholic authors.

I've checked out a few "standard fare" Catholic authors from the library in the past several months. The library still uses the little slip in the back of the book with a date stamp -- they've obviously been using this method for generations. I checked out "How the Reformation Happened" by Hilaire Belloc only to find in the last 60 years that this book has sat on the shelf, it's been checked out about a dozen times (the scant dates go back that far). That means the university librarians have probably handled the book more often to move it during construction and renovation than a new freshman has reached for this book as a source for a history paper.

It wasn't just this book. There were shelves of Belloc's works that stood taller than me. Multiple copies of nearly everything. Multiple copies that have sat neglected on the shelves.

I dug out a smattering of others in a fairly wide spectrum that you'd expect a better showing from: Christopher Dawson, G.K. Chesterton, Fr. Stanley Jaki, Joseph Pearce, Scott Hahn, etc. The book of Father Jaki's that I checked out had been sitting on the shelf for 10 years, brand new, never having been used until I checked it out.

And, sadly, some of the "Catholic" books I've searched for aren't even found at this library. One in particular I had to get through InterLibrary Loan from the University of Minnesota. Some others were at Macalester, the liberal school just down the road; and some were at Concordia and St. Kate's.

Although in the library's defense, their search engine sometimes does not show books that the library does have (try searching under Crusades and Belloc and you won't get any listings, although, if I remember correctly, the library has several copies).

I don't know what's worse, that students aren't aware of these books or their authors and aren't using them, or that the tools to search for the books don't "find" them.

30 July 2010

Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



After last week's toughie, here's more of a softball. Found it in a book I was browsing through at Barnes and Noble.

Category: Saints and sinners

This saint may be the only one with a notarized police record for nighttime brawling with an intent to inflict serious harm.

St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys while you wait for the answer to be revealed.

Demerits for using Google and other sneaky searches. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged. Good luck!!

The first correct answer in the form of a question wins the highly coveted WKJ ribbon to display on your blog, cubicle or refrigerator door.

28 July 2010

23 July 2010

Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



Looks like it's going to be a glorious weekend around here!!! Have a good one.

Category: Those little town blues

These three counties in the Empire State are named after Catholic monarchs.

St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys while you wait for the answer to be revealed.

Demerits for using Google and other sneaky searches. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged. Good luck!!

The first correct answer in the form of a question wins the highly coveted WKJ ribbon to display on your blog, cubicle or refrigerator door.

I'll live with wrinkles

Abortion in U.S. a $1 billion industry: study
May 4th, 2010
By Rick DelVecchio

Abortion in the United States has become a $1 billion-a-year industry quietly fostered over 40 years by a climate that is allowing related, morally suspect commercial offshoots to develop in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and life sciences, a new study alleges.

The author, Vicki Evans, Respect Life coordinator for the Archdiocese of San Francisco's Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns, says the legal ethic of abortion has become a "pervasive cultural ethos of abortion, reaching far beyond the immediate abortion participants to tarnish the very industries originally intended to benefit humanity."

"Legal and widespread abortion has made possible a host of clandestine business practices that thrive under the radar of the American populace," Evans says in a synopsis of her 72-page study. "Regulation and transparency are often avoided because of ideological fears of limiting access to abortion or of inviting scrutiny by opposing ideological groups. Thus, the commercialization of human beings as commodities persists."

Evans says abortion and its offshoots represent exploitation of the weak and vulnerable -- "the worst brand of injustice."

Evans wrote her study, "Commercial Markets Created by Abortion: Profiting From the Fetal Distribution Chain," as her thesis for her licentiate in bioethics from the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome. She recently graduated summa cum laude.

A certified public accountant, Evans used her financial background to follow the money trail in the abortion industry and related businesses.

“I wanted to come up with a body of knowledge that nobody else had thought of before,” she told Catholic San Francisco. “In following the money and seeing who gets paid for what and how much they get paid, and how unregulated these areas are, I found a lot of facts that a lot of people wouldn’t have noticed or wouldn’t have thought to look for.”

Among Evans' findings:

-- There were 1,787 abortion providers in the United States in 2005.

-- Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s abortion market share grew from 12% in 1997 to nearly 25% in 2008.

-- “PPFA presents a comprehensive case study on how business evolves to capitalize on changes in the law and the prevailing culture": During the 1990 through 2008 election cycles, the abortion industry made political contributions of $15.76 million. Of this amount, $12.61 million, or 80%, went to abortion-supportive Democrats running for office.

-- The predominant industries engaged in fetal tissue research are part of the emerging life-science industry: the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and biologics sectors. Commercial use of fetal tissue has historically revolved around the production of childhood vaccines but is now expanding into vaccines to treat flu, HIV and more.

-- The cosmetics industry, particularly the anti-aging market segment, is a beneficiary of the growth of abortion. From miracle creams and emulsions developed using fetal-cell technologies, to face lifts and cosmetic procedures injecting aborted fetal tissue to promote youth and vitality, this business sector has an “enormous and increasing demand” for fetal cells and organs."

-- A fetal parts industry could not have developed without a legal and protected abortion structure. Millions of fetuses that are by-products of abortion cannot technically be bought and sold, but a market does exist

Evans concludes with an appeal to the dignity of life over utiliitarian considerations.

“Natural law dictates that there is something exceptional about man,” she writes. “The commercialization of human beings as commodities is contrary to the law written in his heart. The moral law does indeed have a bearing on the just ordering of society. When morality is excluded from a civil society, the weak and vulnerable are easily exploited for the benefit of the strong and powerful. This is the worst brand of injustice. It deserves to be brought to light.”

Text of Vicki Evans' thesis on abortion industry
May 8th, 2010
ATHENAEUM PONTIFICIUM REGINA APOSTOLORUM
Faculty of Bioethics
"Commercial Markets Created by Abortion: Profiting from the Fetal Distribution Chain"

(The text at this link ends abruptly...anyone know where the rest is?)

19 July 2010

Rock of ages

Cleft into innumerable bits


The older I get the more I understand that since I've been a Catholic all my life, not necessarily always a good or practicing Catholic mind you, but raised and surrounded by Catholics and constantly confirming my belief in the Church as an adult, I realize that I cannot fully see things from any other perspective, specifically relating to my in-laws. It's hard to put my finger on it; I will never have the perspective of a non-Catholic.

To sum it up, since faith and reason are united in Truth, why don't my in-laws move in my direction? Why, quite recently, would a close relation proudly proclaim his desire to leave the Church to become a Lutheran pastor? Why would he think, telling me a Catholic from beginning and to hopeful end, I would react with anything but sadness?

It seems my relative considers himself a "cultural Catholic" because he's never been the practicing sort. But, he's still a Catholic, which places him in an entirely different category than the rest. I've prayed for my proverbial big ol' snow-covered dung hill of Lutheran in-laws, but even though I can't completely understand how they can turn off (or have killed as Father Corapi would warn) the nudgings that I'm certain they receive from their consciences, I expected more from this particular relative -- a move towards Rome instead of away.

Not until I started reading Karl Keating's, Catholicism and Fundamentalism - The Attack on Romanism by Bible Christians*, did I understand more clearly why this in-law's revelation, despite us not being extremely close, so disturbed me. It was the feeling of betrayal, the sense of loss, and the sadness.
What few practicing Catholics can imagine is that they might chuck Catholicism for something like fundamentalism, to which they are not drawn at all. Still, they know that people of their acquaintance, people from their own parishes, have made the transition, and are seemingly none the worse for wear. These former Catholics function the same way on the job, and shop at the same malls. They seem largely unchanged by their newfound faith.

Despite that, their conversion is taken as a betrayal because it is a denial. A change to Eastern Orthodoxy or Anglo-Catholicism is more an adjustment than a real switch; even becoming a lapsed Catholic makes sense, since it is a matter of letting spiritual indolence take control. But fundamentalism? To embrace it is to reject Catholicism outright, because fundamentalism does not just modify, but discards, the sacramental and liturgical core of Catholicism. One might as well subscribe to an obscure Eastern cult. To most Catholics, that would be just as sensible.

My in-law told me he would "always appreciate his (soon-to-be discarded) Catholic Faith." To me this is completely nonsensical and there's not even a good analogy for it. Possibly, "I will always appreciate the medicine that saves me from illness but I choose not to refill the prescription?"

But it didn't stop there.

"God is calling me to be a Lutheran pastor and I'm going to bring people to Jesus. You have to appreciate that God is calling me to do this."

Further, the notion that we, as a collective of Christians, have to evangelize others against "Islam."

Since this was all a shot across the bow, I was totally unprepared. As Karl Keating also said, knowing how to argue is just as important as knowing what to argue. I think I failed on both counts. However, I didn't stay on the ropes.

On the Islam point, I explained that Mohammedism and Protestantism were both heresies and talked about how the Pope is meant to be a bridge builder. (I didn't mention that if all of united Christendom didn't eliminate the heresy of Mohammedism centuries ago, why would he think that a bunch of disparate Christians would fare any better today.)

I also told him that I completely disagreed with his desire to leave the Church and that God would never lead him away from the fullness of Truth. To the comment meant to get some concession out of me about "appreciating" his path, I told him I didn't have to appreciate anyone leaving the Church. As his in-law and fellow Christian I would love him and always pray for him, but in no way did I appreciate this endeavor.

Not the most charitable, probably not the most efficacious, but not completely milque-toast. If God wants me to do any apologetics, He's going to have to provide all of it for me, every last drop.




*This is not to equate Lutherans with fundamentalists

Photo translation from Bulgarian (so it said): This is not a dung-hill. Violators will be fined

12 July 2010

New Blog



Amentior, it's like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

After the Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



Somehow the days are getting away from me. Didn't have a chance to come up with a Jeopardy question last Friday, so am sneaking one in today.

Category: The Heavens

Established in 1891, the Vatican Observatory was involved in "more than four decades astronomical research, which included a prominent international program to map the whole sky, was carried out in the shadow of St. Peter's, but it eventually became obvious that the urban growth of the Eternal City was brightening the sky to such an extent that the fainter stars could no longer be studied." Because of this, during the 1930s, it was moved to this present location.

St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys while you wait for the answer to be revealed.

Demerits for using Google and other sneaky searches. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged. Good luck!!

The first correct answer in the form of a question wins the highly coveted WKJ ribbon to display on your blog, cubicle or refrigerator door.

Existentialism


The ramblings of a six year old after he watched the DVD of The Land Before Time.

"How can there be a land before time? The earth didn't exist before time."

I'm in over my head with him.

03 July 2010

4th of July Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



Hope you are all having a wonderful 4th of July weekend. Sorry this is a bit late. The WKJ question this weekend should be about American history, but the best I can do right now...British History.

Category: British Steel

This English king, crowned while returning from Crusade, had at least two well-known nick-names. One of them similar to the nick-name of Charles Martel (see prior WKJ question for a hint). This king dealt with rebellion of his barons and expelled Jews from his realm.

You need to provide the king's name and his two well known nick-names


St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys for this last week of the Year for Priests while you wait for the answer to be revealed.

Demerits for using Google and other sneaky searches. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged. Good luck!!

The first correct answer in the form of a question wins the highly coveted WKJ ribbon to display on your blog, cubicle or refrigerator door.

01 July 2010

All Seasons


I just finished watching A Man for All Seasons, about the conflict between St. Thomas More and Henry VIII. It was a good movie to watch while sick in bed. The kids even sat and watched it with me.

As you know, Sir Thomas More refused to swear an oath to King Henry’s supremacy in England over the Church and to the validity of his divorce and remarriage.

Some of the lines from the movie stuck with me...

Speaking to his beloved daughter, Meg, as she pleads with him to take the oath to save his life:
Listen, Meg, God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind. If He suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and, yes, Meg, then we can clamor like champions, if we have the spittle for it. But it's God's part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping. If I can take the oath, I will.

And, to his biographer and son-in-law-to-be:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

St. Thomas More is a saint I really like but then don't totally understand. I recently read More's Utopia, which wobbles back and forth between communistic ideas and a criticism of the same. I'd like to think I knew where More stood, but the questions will have to remain until I can reread the book or my kids get old enough to explain it to me.

25 June 2010

Done with VBS Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



Have a good weekend everyone!!

Category: Unintended consequences

It wasn't until the late 18th century that this country was significantly exposed to Catholicism. A group, which later included three priests, none of them missionaries tasked to preach, settled here and Catholicism began to spread. Currently, slightly over a quarter of this country's population is Catholic.

St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Hail Marys for this last week of the Year for Priests while you wait for the answer to be revealed.

Demerits for using Google and other sneaky searches. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged. Good luck!!

The first correct answer in the form of a question wins the highly coveted WKJ ribbon to display on your blog, cubicle or refrigerator door.

22 June 2010

Half way there


Sister joked this morning when she saw me that I returned for another day of Vacation Bible School.

Here's our crew.

With it being so hot this week, I'm glad I'm not in a habit. One upside, this year they have special snacks for the teachers. I think it's meant as a bribe. No animal crackers for this gal.

21 June 2010

Same time next year


I was talking with my brother-in-law's mother over the weekend and somehow the topic of First Communion came up. Next year my son, God-willing, will receive his First Holy Communion. She mentioned that when she was growing up all the neighbor ladies would take turns bringing a ham baked in bread to the family of the First Communicant. I had never heard of it before. The best I can tell, it's an Eastern European thing. I think I may make one of these next Spring.

Both my Irish and German sides didn't have any First Communion traditions that were handed down to my generation. Heck, no photos even exist of my First Communion. That's what happens when you're at the tail-end of almost 60 first cousins...handed down dress, no glow-in-the-dark rosaries as gifts, no ham and no photos.

Smatterings on Monday

With Vacation Bible School this week, things will be pretty busy and blog posts limited. Add to that music and guitar lessons for my son, along with meetings nearly every night this week. I hope to at least limp across the finish line on Friday.

This weekend we were at a high school graduation. Of course, the kids were off playing with the small group of other kids that were there.

We had been there about an hour when the new little playmate of my daughter's came running up to me. She was very intent on talking to me. Her reaction was beginning to make me wonder if my daughter had been mean to her.

"Are you her Mommy?" she demanded, pointing to my daughter. I told her I was. "Does she live just with you?"

I gently had to explain to this little four year-old, who obviously lived with only her mother, that my daughter did live with both parents and even her brother. Then I didn't know what more to say, since with kids, you answer the question and don't expound on things as you risk confusing them or harming their innocence. In this case, the already not-so-innocent awareness of a four year-old.

19 June 2010

Word of the day


Panegyric/panegyrist

pan·e·gyr·ic (pn-jrk, -jrk)
n.
1. A formal eulogistic composition intended as a public compliment.
2. Elaborate praise or laudation; an encomium.

Used in a sentence:
"Illness and unceasing anxiety had seen to her losing all that; and we can safely neglect all panegyric in that direction, even the observation of foreign envoys; for each panegyrist had an axe to grind."
~Hilaire Belloc, Elizabeth, Creature of Circumstance

Unrelated, however, I liked Belloc's lament in the above book about the decline of English prose and language:
"On the other hand, more and more of us now possess a familiar acquaintance with the glorious German tongue in which it is possible to converse with animals."

I thought it was that Victorian charmer, Dr. Dolittle, who spoke with animals.

Snark off.

18 June 2010

Just browsing

Had an appointment today. Usual babysitters (ie: aunts) were out of town, so I had to take the kids with me. Ah, fun. But, they weren't too disruptive.

Once the appointment was over, the kids and I walked next door to an independent children's bookseller. My daughter walked in and said, "It's all a kids' section!!!!" Off she ran squealing.

The thrill for me wore off rather quickly when I found...

No, not the Tarot set for kids or a Ouija board, but...



Product Description
Lily is 9. Her sister Daisy is 1. And she's no ordinary baby. Somehow, when she was born, something went rather wrong... and now Daisy is a Witch Baby. Nobody knows this but Lily - she's the only one who can see when Daisy makes the fridge float in the air, or turns people into slugs, or summons up her very stinky dog Waywoof...

About the Author
DG is the author and illustrator of many books for children, such as No Matter What and the Pure Dead series, which includes Pure Dead Magic and Pure Dead Wicked.

Isn't that special? A whole series where "something went rather wrong."